Page 35 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

Or they could find some remote and uninhabited island. He’d have to consult his waggoner to find the perfect spot. After he fashioned a shelter out of fallen trees, and with no pirate hunters to bother them, they could spend their days fishing and their nights making love upon the sand.

He would teach her the name of every star in the sky, and she could teach him the name of every member of her extensive family, and then they could begin a family of their own—and keep going until they ran out of names of either stars or Scots.

It was a beautiful sort of dream, the kind that physically ached to wake up from, the kind you could never cling to for long before reality rose up to punch you in the jaw.

She was an educated girl with a family and a home. She wouldn’t wish to trade one island prison for another, even if he would promise her the warmth she was chasing. And besides all that, neither the navy nor Mad MacLeod was likely to let him sail away and start a life someplace new.

The sooner he put her on a boat back to Scotland, the better off they’d both be. Best he could do was offer her safety on her adventure and open her eyes to the sort of pleasure she should demand from her next husband.

Chapter Nine

Strangely, Maggie had never felt more rested than she did each morning after spending the night wrapped in Bash’s arms, swaying with the swell of the sea.

After a week of sleeping side by side in the hammock, she still marveled at the fact that she didn’t feel crowded out by him. The canvas expanded to cradle them both, and his body heat provided the cozy warmth she’d been longing for. He didn’t kiss her again or touch her in the way he had the first night, but his arms around her kept her safe and still, so she never once feared she might tumble out.

How many times had she woken in the bed she shared with Jeremiah, squeezing herself so close to the edge one flinch might send her sprawling to the floor? It wasn’t necessarily because he took up too much room, but even her unconscious mind had been desperate to put space between them. How strange then, to find comfort in proximity now. She tried not to dwell on what it might mean.

The truth was, Maggie didn’t like to think too hard about her marriage. Usually, such memories brought a headache and a queasy stomach, but it was growing harder to keep from comparing the past with her present situation. Jeremiah had been her husband. He had touched her everywhere, but he’d never touched her in the way Bash now had. He’d also called her every insult under the sun, and now perhaps she’d earned some of those epithets, for she’d finally indulged her most wicked desires.

Perhaps her soul was damned to hell, because Maggie didn’t feel wicked, and she certainly didn’t feel sorry. No, she felt amazed. She felt worshipped—like a goddess in a temple surrounded by men whose sole purpose in life was to pleasure her and only her.

Had she actually died? Was this ship some kind of strange bacchanal limbo?

He was there now, hard behind her, as he’d been each morning since that night a week ago. She wondered, not for the first time, which other activities might be possible within the confines of a hammock.

Who even was she, to consider such things? These were the naughty musings of teenage Maggie, who had long since been replaced by the version in a cage. By professing to the world that she was a child of fourteen, had Bash spoken her naive lust back into existence? A year ago, awareness of Jeremiah’s arousal made her sick to her stomach, but not now. Not with Bash.

No, Bash the pirate was going to be trouble.

As he came awake, he nuzzled the back of her neck, sending a shower of shivers down her spine, then he moved his braw arm off her, brushing the side of her breast in the process, murmuring, “Sorry.”

Maggie hoped he wasn’t actually sorry. She never wanted to leave this cozy cocoon.

His hand came to rest on her hip bone, and he whispered as he had each morning, “Best you sit up first, and get your feet under you, else we’ll both wind up on the floor.” The fantasy was over yet again. Time to go back to being pirates, the sailing master and his obedient cabin boy.

She’d like to show him just how obedient she could be. Settle. Down.

Maggie did as he’d instructed, snatching up his cravat to rebind herself. When she peeked over her shoulder to ensure he wasn’t watching, she noticed faint red scratches on his back. A reminder of their time together a few nights ago? Beneath those fading marks was a crisscross of old, healed-over scars.

She opened her mouth to ask, but then he cast a glance back at her, catching her looking, and she swallowed her questions. In the next moment, he pulled on his shirt and stepped out of the alcove, giving her privacy to finish dressing. She tucked some dried beef into her pocket for later and headed above deck after him.

Each night after the first, there had been no discussion or negotiation. Bash simply pulled off his shirt and nodded towards the hammock before they tumbled in together and fell asleep. Each night she had hoped to revisit their nocturnal activities, and each night she could feel the restraint in his taut muscles as he tucked himself away and lay stock still.

Her disappointment had been tempered by exhaustion, along with the peacefulness of simply being held as the ship rocked her to sleep.

Last night they had once again taken the late watch, and Maggie savored the time alone with him outside under a magnificent cloak of stars.

“Do you ever get homesick?” she had finally asked.

“For Scotland, you mean? Not as such.”

“You don’t consider yourself from there?”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m from nowhere,” he admitted.

She wanted to ask him all kinds of questions then, but before she settled on the right one, he went on. “In some ways, home is more of a person than a place, innit?”

“How do you mean?”